Federal authorities said Thursday that the Army veteran and
Jamaican teen-ager accused in the sniper slayings that terrorized
the Washington area for weeks will stand trial first in Virginia,
bypassing the state most closely identified with the attacks for the
state most likely to execute both suspects.
U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft praised the work of investigators in
Maryland, where the three-week chain of shootings began and ended
and where six of the 10 victims died. But Ashcroft said officials
picked two Virginia counties to lead the prosecution because they
provided the best legal framework, best evidence and best chance to
secure death sentences.
“I believe that the
citizens of all affected jurisdictions will be encouraged to see us
move aggressively on these criteria, and that they will be pleased
if we are as successful in our cooperative effort of prosecution as we
have been in the effort to investigate this matter,” Ashcroft said.
John Allen Muhammad, 41, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 17,
were transferred Thursday from federal custody in Baltimore to a
high-security detention center in Virginia. Muhammad will face
charges in Prince William County, Va., in the killing Oct. 9 of
Vietnam veteran Dean H. Meyers, who was shot in the head while pumping
gas.
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Malvo will stand trial in Fairfax County,
Va., in
the Oct. 14 shooting death of FBI analyst Linda Franklin, who was shot
in the head as she and her husband loaded packages into their car
after a shopping trip at a Home Depot store in the busy Seven Corners
shopping center. He was charged in juvenile court, but Fairfax County
Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert F. Horan said he would seek to have
Malvo tried as an adult.
Both men are charged under
a Virginia anti-terrorism law that allows prosecutors to seek the
death penalty without having to prove who was the triggerman in the
crime. But Thursday’s deliberate parsing of cases and counties
suggested that authorities believe the men took turns firing on their
alleged victims and that evidence could show each was the shooter in
the county where he is charged.
Ashcroft and the
local prosecutors declined to discuss the evidence in the cases.
Muhammad and Malvo are expected to appear at separate court appearances Friday in Manassas and Fairfax.
The
attorney general’s decision, announced at an afternoon news
conference, came as the long list of crimes attributed to Muhammad and Malvo continued to grow
well beyond the three-week chain of attacks on the suburbs of
Washington.
In Atlanta Thursday, local in
vestigators said ballistics evidence had linked Muhammad and Malvo
to a shooting outside a liquor store there Sept. 21 — the same day the pair is
accused of shooting two women
outside a liquor store in Montgomery, Ala., about 150 miles away.
The .22-caliber handgun used in those attacks also is believed to have
been used in a Sept. 5 robbery and shooting that wounded a pizzeria
owner in Prince George’s County, weeks before the random serial slayings erupted with five killings in Montgomery County in a bloody
16-hour span Oct. 2 and Oct. 3.
Investigators in
Louisiana and Washington state also suspect the pair in killings in
those states, and police across the country are looking closely at a
range of other unsolved crimes. Ashcroft and law enforcement officials said the
nationwide investigation is continuing.
But
the three weeks in October that made up the brunt of the killing and
horrified the nation because of their random nature — with
the victims killed as they went about everyday activities such as
pumping gas or mowing a lawn — will be the focus of the
first prosecutions.
Ashcroft Thursday described the
attacks that left 10 people dead and three wounded, including a 13-
year-old Bowie boy, as “brutal, random acts of murder” and said it
is appropriate and “imperative that the ultimate sanction be
available for those who have committed these crimes.”
Maryland’s chief federal public defender Thursday
criticized the government for allowing Virginia’s “rate of
executions to dictate the decision about where justice would be
sought in this case.”
“The government’s clumsy,
macabre forum shopping for the easiest venue in which the death
penalty could be obtained has diminished our system of justice,”
said James Wyda, who had represented Muhammad in the two weeks since
his arrest.
Ashcroft had made no secret that the
central question in the behind-the-scenes discussions over where to
try the men focused on where prosecutors would be most likely to win
a death sentence.
Of the jurisdictions in this
area, only Virginia allows the death penalty for people who are under
18. Maryland and the federal court system prohibit the execution of
minors.
Virginia ranks second in the nation, behind
Texas, in death penalty cases. Virginia has executed 86 people since
the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 — including five people in the past two years, according to the
Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.
Maryland, which has a moratorium on executions, has put
three people to death since 1976. And in the sniper case, there
were other potential problems with a death penalty trial in Maryland.
To seek the death penalty, prosecutors must prove one of 10
“aggravating factors.” The one factor that most closely fits the
sniper slayings in Montgomery County allows prosecutors to seek
the death penalty when multiple homicides result from the “same
incidence.”
Experienced prosecutors and legal
experts said the sniper attacks, which occurred at different times
and different locations even within Montgomery County, did not appear
to fit that definition and warned that a death penalty verdict based on that
logic could be overturned.
Montgomery County State’s
Attorney Douglas F. Gansler filed the first murder charges against
Muhammad and Malvo a day after their arrest, but it was clear within
days that the first trial was unlikely to come in the county that had
been the center of the investigation.
Gansler did not
appear at Thursday’s news conference in Washington, although other
Maryland officials were on hand, including U.S. Attorney Thomas
M. DiBiagio, Montgomery County Police Chief Charles A. Moose,
Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan and two of the state’s
top federal law enforcement officers — FBI Special Agent Gary M. Bald and Special Agent Michael R. Bouchard with the U.S. Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
“As I have said all along,
the most important objective in all of these prosecutions is that justice is done and that these two men be held accountable for the
crimes that they allegedly committed,” Gansler said in a brief
written statement.
DiBiagio’s office had handled all
proceedings against the two men since their arrest Oct. 24 at a rest
stop outside Frederick. The high-profile case also could have brought
tremendous attention to the Maryland U.S. attorney’s office. Since
taking over as U.S. attorney, DiBiagio has sought to build an image of
his office as a get-tough and hard-charging team of prosecutors.
DiBiagio has refused to comment on the case. In U.S. District
Court in Greenbelt Thursday, attorneys from his office filed notice
that the 20-count criminal complaint against Muhammad would be
dismissed. All federal proceedings against Malvo remained sealed.
Muhammad
and Malvo were moved early Thursday from the Maryland Correctional
Adjustment Center in Baltimore, the downtown prison also known as
Supermax, and transported under heavy guard to the Alexandria
Detention Center in Northern Virginia.
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Sun staff writers
Laura Sullivan, Andrea F. Siegel and Julie Bykowicz
contributed to this article.